strongorcbutch:

strongorcbutch:

My girlfriend and I just had our front porch defaced with “Queers”. 

A few days after the incident I’d just like to say

1. Thanks for the supportive messages. They helped a lot. We’re both fine and nothing else has come of it.

2. While I fully support self-identifying as queer by those to whom the term is connected, anyone pushing the “queer is a slur is a terf dogwhistle” line needs to fuck off and spend some time outside Portland ESPECIALLY if you’re a cis person.

This is commentary specifically on people trying to label people uncomfortable with the word as terfs.

I grew up in a town in the midwest and the idea that queer could be something other than something shouted at me in anger and preceding violence was not something introduced to me until I was already an adult. These days sometimes I use it self referentially. Sometimes I don’t. Past couple days I don’t think I’d have the stomach to. I left the midwest to try and get away from this shit. I understand people who want to identify with it. And I understand people who want some distance from it.

And I’m one entire trans woman and lesbian so anyone calling me a terf over my complex feelings can fuck off as well.

By and large the debate over Queer has seemed to me to largely ignore, on both sides, that it’s a big country and a big world and one person’s experiences with the word are different from another’s. We’re hotly debating on both a national and a global stage something which has no clear answer on that level. Maybe everyone needs to take some step back and chill.